A Fellow of Infinite Jest
by MightyMiget
Summary: He's quite the scary guy. But hey, the world's a scary place. What's a girl to do?


_**A fellow of infinite jest…**_

Three days since Toga Himiko had last showered. Two days since she had been first forced to dig through a dumpster for her dinner. But only one since she had seen _him_ —that beautiful, radiant magician. The _Miracle Man_ , the audience had declared after one especially impressive card trick.

Even during this so called ' _Age of Heroes'_ where the vast majority of the population had a incredible abilities in the form of _Quirks_ — Himiko thought simple street magic was enthralling _and_ inexplicable. Was it just a Quirk that allowed the magicians to do what they did? Or was it just simple skill? Himiko bet it was the latter. After all, even a Quirkless person could learn how to do a magic trick—and the huge variety of circus tricks that the Miracle Man had displayed today couldn't possibly have been explained by a single Quirk.

Natural talent, showmanship, and practice. That's what it took to be a magician. Not some Quirk—Himiko decided. That made him all the more impressive.

The crowd around her roared in excitement, the noise breaking her from her reverie. She looked up and saw him, silhouetted by the storefront behind him, his arms outstretched, his head upturned—dozens and dozens of small white doves fluttering from behind him—she didn't know what to say.

She stood there, mouth agape as the last dove flew away into the sunset, as the crowd dispersed into the evening, as the magician packed up his supplies, counting his income for that day.

And despite having spent the day being astounded by the Miracle Man's performance, distracted from all the problems in the world—she found tears threatening to burst from her eyes.

The day was done.

The crowd had went home.

The magic was gone.

She was still alone.

She couldn't help but cry a little.

"Miss?"

Himiko quickly wiped her face with the sleeve of her dirty, baggy sweater. She _hated_ it when people saw her cry. She had earned too many beatings that way.

"Yeah?"

"You dropped these."

The magician tossed Himiko a bouquet of roses that she just barely caught.

"What?"

He gave her a grin and a wave and performed one last trick.

"I'll see you tomorrow."

He disappeared into the night.

/

That was the second day in a row now that the girl, that blonde one with the cute face, had spent watching him.

Hisoka Morow, the Miracle Man, didn't know what to make of it. Was it creepy or flattering?

Judging by the way she dressed, she was probably a highschooler around 16 or 17 years old, just a three or four years younger than he was.

But—now here was the real question—if she was a highschooler, why had she been here _all day_? If he recalled correctly, it was Wednesday, meaning that yesterday was Tuesday, meaning that _all the good little boys and girls_ were supposed to be at school.

Was the blonde girl _not_ a good little girl? Was she some sticky little kid playing hooky? Why the Hell would she spend her day at his magic show and not with her friends? He was good but not _that_ good. What kind of highschooler would skip school and sit around alone all day to watch a street performer try and make a living?

A lonely, pathetic highschooler, that's what kind.

Hisoka wondered briefly and thought back to her dirty clothes and unwashed face—the way that her teeth were shiny with plaque from not having brushed them in the morning. Was she homeless? Perhaps she was a runaway?

He gave himself a little shrug. It wasn't like him to care so much about someone's _past_. But in his defense, she was an interesting one. Her _Aura_ was abnormally strong for a civilian. If his memory served him correctly, students wearing that uniform went to the local public high school, not any sort of hero course, so she probably wasn't a hero in training. Then why was her Aura so bright then? Hisoka wondered to himself as he chewed on a couple french fries that he had ordered. WgRonald's was trash, but he was hungry and that was the closest option available.

The cashier, some pimpled thirty-something year old, stared enviously as the magician did an idle one handed shuffle, using the other hand to nibble on his fries or to scoop up some of his WgFlurry. Now and then Hisoka _dipped_ his fry in the overly sweet pseudo ice cream.

That nosey cashier didn't go unnoticed and _something_ about the way that the dirty failure-in-life was looking at him was really annoying him..

The magician finished his food and got up from his table, leering at the cashier, making sure that the man saw the trash on the table so that he'd have to clean it up.

Hisoka left out the front entrance, waving idly at the glaring cashier, and applied his _Nen_ , one end of his _Bungee Gum_ to the ugly cashier's face, the other end of the strand stuck to one of the metal baskets used to dip french fries into the bubbling oil.

The clown grinned to himself as he left the restaurant and walked towards his apartment. His smile grew into a full blown laugh as he heard screaming from the fast-food store once he contracted his _Bungee Gum_.

He was in a great mood.

The next day, the WgRonald's that Hisoka often visited was closed, something about a corporate investigation, how a metal basket coated in hot oil had slipped from one employee's hand onto the head of another…

/

Often times Hisoka found it incredible that so many people were ignorant of what _Nen_ was. Especially when the majority of the world had _Quirks_ , which he considered to simply be an instinctive usage of one's _Hatsu_. Society, of course, had their own way of classifying Quirks, but it was so _limiting!_ The _Nen_ system that Hisoka had learned long ago, during his time with the circus explained every much more extensively.

For example: why did Quirk users tend to have superhuman capabilities besides their Quirks? Compared to the Quirkless, those who had Quirks healed more quickly, tended to be more athletic, and had far superior reaction times—the Quirkless couldn't compete, not just because they lacked a Quirk, but because their _Nen_ was weaker than someone with a Quirk. All Might for example, Hisoka theorized, was likely an Enhancer with great talent for _Ko, Ken,_ and _Ryu_. That explained the Number One Hero's great durability and strength _(Hisoka was something of an All Might fanboy, but not for the typical reasons_ ). A Quirk user had at least some instinctive control over their Aura that was needed to use their Quirk, a Quirkless person didn't have that.

He watched his number one fan from a rooftop. The blonde highschooler drank up the blood of some drunken salaryman that she had cornered and stabbed in an empty alleyway.

Yes, it had been an interesting couple hours. Following his daily performance, Hisoka had followed his ever present blonde fangirl, using _In_ and his _Texture Surprise_ to keep from being found out. He wasn't disappointed. She was an interesting one, that girl.

While Hisoka had more evidence to support his suspicions that the girl was homeless, he had also discovered something far more interesting—the girl's _Quirk_.

Upon ingesting the blood of her victim, the girl transformed into them. Simple enough. Hisoka could easily explain the mechanism behind it, what Nen principles and techniques were involved—what he couldn't explain was if Nen training would _improve_ it.

Currently, from what he had seen, only the girl's body had changed. After her transformation finished, she looked exactly like the man whose blood she had drank, except she was wearing her original outfit, the dirty schoolgirl uniform. And because she had quickly stripped and changed into the man's business suit, Hisoka deduced that she either couldn't transform her clothes the way she did her body, or that she wanted to preserve her clothes for some other reason. Sentimentality? Perhaps she couldn't change her clothes _back_ to the way they were if she transformed them?

Although he hadn't confirmed it with _Gyo_ , which would have taken the fun out of puzzling out the mechanism, Hisoka's logic was usually fairly sound when it came to matters such as these. The blonde girl's _Transformation_ Quirk most likely used _Ren_ to extend Aura past the body, into the new form that it was to take, then applied Transformation type Hatsu to give the Aura the weight of flesh, and then finally using Conjuration to correctly mimic the appearance of her victim. Of course the girl didn't _know_ that. Hisoka didn't know for sure either. He'd need to see her Quirk in action several more times to truly deduce how it functioned.

But that was where Hisoka's interest lay: the girl's Quirk. Why didn't the girl just transform her clothes along with her body? Was it that her Aura didn't extend to her clothes? Or was the issue that she couldn't change them back? Would training in _Enhancement_ allow the blonde to imbue her clothes with Aura and then change their appearance as she did her body? Could she learn to reverse the process? How far did her Quirk go? Could her Aura do what his could not and actually copy the texture and feel of a human body?

Hisoka was well and truly excited now. Anyone with a Quirk could learn Nen, but he had heard it was ridiculously difficult—having an insane natural talent for Aura manipulation, Hisoka had never encountered anything more than a momentary frustration when learning the Nen techniques. Another problem with learning Nen other than the difficulty was that there were so few practitioners, probably just about a hundred thousand in the entire world according to Moritonio, the man who had first introduced Nen to Hisoka.

The circus troupe leader had also been the one to warn Hisoka about the difficulty of Nen training; that it had taken Abaki, the man's first real student, over ten months to have even a semblance of control over Ren and Ten, the most basic Nen techniques. Hisoka had learned both and more in the span of a couple of hours.

Would _she_ be able to learn Nen?

Would _she_ be able to _grow_ into something worth destroying?

Would anyone?

The clown licked his lips. It had been so long since he had faced a _real_ challenge. The one-dimensionality of most Quirk users and Hisoka's intensive knowledge of how to counter the Nen techniques that governed all Quirks meant that fights were highly biased in Hisoka's favor. All he needed to do was to figure out a weakness in their Quirk, exploit it, and the fight would be over. Hisoka had only ever fought against one person who used Nen, and that had been Moritonio…

He admired the homeless girl, now indistinguishable from that unlucky salaryman, exit the alleyway, straightening her stolen tie around her collar. She made her way down the sparsely trafficked street, towards the nearest restaurant.

The magician followed, humming happily.

It was time to investigate.

/

Why hadn't she done it sooner? Himiko, still in disguise as the unlucky salaryman, had managed to find a snag a table at _Phoking Gud_ , a popular Vietnamese restaurant. Not too pricey, but definitely something that she wouldn't have been able to afford had she not robbed that salaryman. Once she had stabbed the man and put on her disguise, Himiko had immediately taken his wallet and withdrawn as much cash as she could from the nearest ATM.

Oh, that had been a wonderful sight—those crisp banknotes meant so much more than wealth for Himiko. It meant being able to bathe for the first time in almost five days. It meant being able to get fresh clothes, maybe even pay for a night at a hostel or something so she could actually sleep in a _bed_. It meant being able to have a warm meal.

The restaurant smelled amazing. All those humiliating days of rummaging through trash and eating stale scraps was behind her. All she needed to do was rob someone every now and then and she'd be able to eat like a king. Or a queen. So what if some schmuck ended dead? Himiko was _homeless_. And she _enjoyed_ cutting people.

She also _really_ enjoyed food. The chilly autumn breeze had really put her in the mood for a warm bowl of soup and noodles. If only the waiter would hurry with her order… Himiko was starving.

The bells hanging from the doorjamb jangled melodically as another customer entered. Himiko turned to see the hostess gesturing the man towards the table that she was already seated at. Damn! She cursed. Was it that crowded that they'd seat two strangers at the same table?

It wasn't that she was anti-social or anything—quite the contrary actually—she was quite the outgoing person. It's just that she didn't want her first real meal in the past couple days to be ruined by some strange guy.

Whatever. Toga huffed inwardly and heard her stomach growl. It wouldn't do to cause a fuss and delay her meal even more.

"That man died you know."

A whisper came from the stranger sitting across from her. He was a wrinkled gentleman with a beard and strangely huge earlobes, a really strange looking guy.

Was he crazy? A certain finger of uncertainty wriggled its way into Himiko's brain. He couldn't be talking about _that_ , right?

"I'll admit, I didn't expect that you'd actually _do_ it." The old man spoke with a unabashed glee in his tone. "Finished what you started, you know what I mean?"

She was beginning to realize what the old man was talking about… had she been followed? Himiko had been extra paranoid so as to _not_ be caught or otherwise noticed when robbing that salaryman. Had she overlooked something? Surely this guy wasn't a Hero, otherwise she'd have been arrested already.

Did this old man know who she was?

"What are you talking about?" Himiko spoke in the salaryman's nasally voice. "What do you mean _that man died_?" She whispered the last bit so that no one would overhear it. "I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about." Of course the man had died. Himiko had cut several important arteries.

The old man tutted disapprovingly. "Young ladies shouldn't lie. It's a bad habit."

That made her blood run cold.

This old bastard did know.

"Look in your wallet and follow the instructions." The old man was smiling, but something about it was so unsettling. Even people at nearby tables turned to stare, somehow sensing that not all was well in the world. "I'm expecting you~."

He stood and left a fistful of coins on the table, not even bothering to wait for his order to come.

Himiko stared at the receding figure, a pit forming in her stomach. Once the man left she brought out the wallet she had pilfered, finding it stuffed full of cash, far more than she had withdrawn from the ATM.

What had the old man been talking about?

Behind the now deceased salaryman's driver's license was a playing card, the ace of hearts.

On it, scrawled in black marker, was an address.

On the margin of the license was a message.

 _Three hours, blondie. The Miracle Man._

 **Notes:**

 **Hisoka wasn't somehow transported to the BNHA universe or anything. He's been living here his whole life.**

 **Hisoka's background is roughly adapted from Sui Ishida's one-shot** _ **Hisoka's Past**_ **. Highly recommend to understand everything.**

 **Aura is the basis for Quirks, but the vast majority of people, including Quirk users, are ignorant to Nen. If we take Hisoka for example, he would have been born with a Quirk, but after learning Nen, would have been able to improve his existing Quirk and learn a new one. In** _ **Hisoka's**_ _**Past**_ **this is explained pretty well.** _ **Texture**_ _**Surprise**_ **, one of Hisoka's abilities, is basically adapted from another person's ability,** _ **Scarf Ace**_ **. I'll touch on this more in later chapters.**

 **Hisoka is 20 years old in this fic, 8 years younger than he is in the start of HxH. The fic will center around how Hisoka's character in** _ **Hisoka's Past**_ **evolves into the sadistic clown we see and love in the main HxH storyline. We see in** _ **Hisoka's Past**_ **that he already has a lot of the qualities of 28 year old Hisoka, but he isn't quite as violent, sexual, creepy, etc.**

 **Himiko is a little OOC this chapter, but we don't get to see much of her anyways. I think it'll take me some while to get used to writing her.**


End file.
